Solid ink or phase change ink printers conventionally receive ink in a solid form, either as pellets or as ink sticks. The solid ink pellets or ink sticks are typically inserted through an insertion opening of an ink loader for the printer, and the ink sticks are pushed or slid along the feed channel by a feed mechanism and/or gravity toward a melt plate in the heater assembly. The melt plate melts the solid ink impinging on the plate into a liquid that is delivered to an ink reservoir which maintains the ink in melted form for delivery to a print head for jetting onto a recording medium.
One difficulty faced during operation of solid ink printers is the electrical energy consumed by the printer. In particular electrical energy is required for the melting device to convert the solid ink to melted ink and print heads also require electrical energy to maintain the melted ink in the liquid phase. In an effort to conserve energy, solid ink printers are operated in various modes that consume different levels of energy. In these various modes, one or more components that include heaters to maintain melted ink in the liquid phase may be shut off to enable the melted ink to “freeze” or return to the solid state.
One problem that arises from the freezing of melted ink is the formation of bubbles in the solidified ink. These entrapped bubbles must be purged when electrical energy is coupled to the components to liquefy the solidified ink. The purging operation, however, results in the discarding of ink from the printing system. Customers generally view the loss of ink as being undesirable. Thus, enabling the solidification of melted ink without the formation of entrapped bubbles in the solidified ink would be useful.